BURNING ISSUESOfficials get cauldron right at 'Glitch Games'

By David Barron |
February 18, 2010

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — In an apparent happy ending to the latest episode in what some are calling the Glitch Games, fans stood in line for 45 minutes Wednesday afternoon for an up-close, overhead, picture-snapping look at Vancouver's waterfront Olympic cauldron.

Organizers rearranged security fences overnight Tuesday after fielding criticism for what some visitors described as a Berlin Wall-like barrier in front of the outdoor cauldron that will remain in place after the Olympics come to an end.

Officials also obtained permission to escort fans to the roof of a nearby restaurant that will open after the Games. The overhead view allows better camera angles for those inclined to wait, and the lines got longer as the day wore on.

“It's really beautiful,” said Harold Terpstra of Linden, Wash., who stood in line with his wife, Mavis, for the rooftop angle on the cauldron, for more than 30 minutes shortly after noon. “It's a once-in-a-lifetime thing, you know. It's the Olympic flame.”

Next crisis: mice infestation

The Terpstras were satisfied customers, and John Furlong, CEO of the Vancouver Organizing Committee, would like to have more like them after a week of slight inconveniences, such as the obligatory transportation snafus; irritating breakdowns, like the malfunctioning ice machine at speedskating and officiating errors at biathlon; and the most significant tragedy of the Vancouver Games, the death of Georgian luge slider Nodar Kumaritashvili.

Controversy surrounding the cauldron, a permanent replica of the version that failed to emerge completely as planned from the floor of BC Place during the Opening Ceremony, was only the latest brush fire with which Furlong and his staff had to deal.

More are certain to come, and they will probably emerge from the most unlikely places. Furlong was asked Wednesday, for example, about a report that Cypress Mountain was suffering a mice infestation after bales of hay were trucked in to reinforce the muddy, snow-starved slopes.

The British press has been particularly harsh about their Canadian cousins. The Guardian suggested Vancouver could be staging the worst Olympics ever, outstripping the commercial sprawl of Atlanta 1996 or the financial chaos of Montreal 1976.

“I've read some things I didn't like reading and that I don't think were true or fair,” Furlong said. “We make mistakes, and when things don't go right, you have to fix them.”

In the case of the cauldron, he said, “What did we do when the problem happened? We fixed it. In the course of the Olympics, there are hundreds of thousands of things happening, and we're trying to reduce the possibility of them happening and when they do happen, to get them out of the way so that people's enjoyment is not diminished.”

The Vancouver Organizing Committee and the International Olympic Committee remain particularly sensitive to criticism surrounding Kumaritashvili's death from injuries suffered in a training accident and suggestions that track safety was not a priority.

“We started the Games with just about the most severe human blow you could have,” Furlong said. “I don't have the facilities to deal with something like that. It was a horrible blow.”

Then there's the weather

IOC spokesman Mark Adams said the group remains confident that the Whistler sliding track where Kumaritashvili was killed remains safe for competitors.

“There have been 5,000 runs on this course,” Adams said. “It was adjusted following the runs, as always happens. … It is absolutely right that we should be held to account, and (the luger's death) is a sad circumstances, but we're very happy with the way the track is.”

Organizers faced another safety issue overnight during a concert by the band Alexisonfire at David Lam Park. Nineteen people, nine of whom required hospital treatment, were hurt when a barricade in front of the stage gave way.

Weather remains an issue in Whistler, where several Alpine events have been rescheduled, and at Cypress Mountain, where organizers canceled 20,000 standing-room tickets for snowboard and ski cross events after heavy rains last weekend created what they described as unsafe conditions in some spectator areas.